The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 20 July 1911, Page 1331

The Storyteller

THE PENALTY, OF HEROISM pietty place for a Duval to land!’ groaned Charleton Duval, as his eyes wandered from the white counterpane beneath which he lay to the white ceiling and back to the convent-infirmary’s walls, bare of everything save a crucifix and a few holy pictures. I d just like to know what the Huguenot fathers would think of a descendant of theirs who went forth to wax actually to war ! —only to find himself early m the game stretched full length with a broken leg upon a convent bed! Bah! It’s disgusting!’ And with that, young Duval of Carolinian Huguenot family, private in the Confederate army, made an impatient movement as if to turn over and then remembering that he couldn't, for lack of strength to exercise his vitality any other way, he jerked the coverlid over his head and continued his impatient soliloquy ; • ‘ It’s a miserable shame ! Plague take that stumbling mare! I don’t see why it could not have been an arm instead of a leg, so I could get out of this ! ’ Thus again Charleton fretted for the fortieth time over the fate which, since yesterday afternoon, had stranded him in such a plight. Moving on with his regiment to join Bragg, who was chasing Buell, Duval's horse had slipped—giving such a twist to the rider’s limb as to break it when they went down together. The accident had happened in sight of St. Thomas’s’. Duval s companions had carried him over to the convent, hoping to get some immediate help, for he and these companions had been out on a forage some distance from their corps when the accident happened, and so were away from the surgeon and any help they might have had. When they arrived at St. Thomas’s it happened that the old priest, Father Martin, who had an M.D. degree before he entered the priesthood, was in the convent corridor as Duval was borne up fo the door. Father Martin saw at once that it was a break. The nearest doctor was two miles away, and it was impossible to reach the surgeon of Duval’s company. So when Father Martin offered to set the leg and take care of the young soldier for a few days with the Sisters’ help, Duval’s companions took up his often straightway, in spite of Duval’s protestations. He didn’t believe it was a break ! He knew he’d be all right in a day or so!. And so on, and so on He rebelled against being left behind. Meantime, there he was, in the arms of his comrades, being borne up to a little white bed in one of the small wings of the infirmary. Off the others had gone, leaving him there, with Father Martin’s promise that he would do all he could to take care of the invalid and start him off to Louisville to join them by the time they caught up with Bragg. c , b 1 . So in the convent infirmary lay Charleton Duval, with no one of his own near him except Augustus, his body-servant, the old darky who had followed ‘ Massa Charleton ’ to the war, and now shared his young master’s chagrin at being left behind. As Charleton ay fuming under the coverlid he could* not help but laugh at how funny Gus had been the night before their first night in the convent. Neither he nor his master had ever known any Catholics at close ran°-e and it seemed a singular situation for them nowto be, as it were, at the mercy of the gentle-looking enough to be sure, if an unfamiliar sight to the darky and * Massa Charleton.’ Gus refused to leave his master’s bedside that first night, affecting a suspicious ieeling about ‘ dese hyah cur’ous Cath’lics!’* He could not be persuaded to budge from the large armchair beside the bed. ‘ Maybe I’ll drop off now and then but I ain’t goin’ to leave you !’ he insisted. ’ Charleton laughed. ‘All right, Gus..' But if you do drop off, keep one eye open.’ J And so Gus had kept vigil—or had pretended to hor as a matter of fact it was Charleton who could not, sleep The pain in the leg as it was beginning to set, his fretfulness about being side-tracked this

way, made sleep almost impossible. The consequence was that this afternoon, as he lay there recalling the last thirty-six ignominious hours, the sleep lost the night before now gradually fastened down his eyelids. It was late afternoon when those eyelids lifted. The room was in subdued light, the blinds being threequarters drawn, , and as he woke he did not at first know just where ho was. Gradually he remembered. His eyes, growing accustomed to the light again, began to take in the things about the room with which he had made acquaintance since yesterday. But as they wakened to real, conscious vision they suddenly became aware of something not seen before. There, by the small table at the foot of the bed, in the armchair where faithful Gus tried to keep watch the night' before, an unfamiliar figure sat. The figure, it was, of a young woman, perhaps two or three years younger than hesay about twenty.- The soft light brought out golden hues in the brown head that was bent over a bookone of the books Father Martin had. left him yesterday. Charleton blinked, rubbed his eyes." Yes, there was a very pretty girl sitting there and no mistake. He was awake and in his senses! He tried to rise on his elbow to get a better look and make perfectly certain—and then that bad leg gave a . twitch and its owner an irresistible groan. Immediately a pair of brown eyes turned from the book to him, and a soft voice said :

* Oh, you musn’t do that! You are to lie perfectly still!’

In spite of the sudden twitch of pain Charleton settled down on his back again, and looked at the owner of the brown eyes saying, in a tone expressive of pleasure and surprise, doubt and whimsical amusement, ‘ I thought I was in a convent!’ ‘ You are,’ was the answer, pitched in a laughing key that met his own in a discreet half-way. * But you!’ he half-protested and half-queried. * Oh, ll’m in one too,’ replied the girl, who by this time had risen and stood looking down at him, the expression in her eyes being that of demure concern for. his comfort and such a light of happy youth and beauty as Charleton Duval had not seen for many a day, though he was a connoisseur in the pretty eyes of Carolina.

‘ You must really keep very still, you know,’ she was continuing. ‘ Sister Marie will be in shortly with your supper. I just stepped in to see if there’s anything you specially want, and found you asleep.’ Yes, there was something he wanted very much, but he could not bring himself to ask straight out for it. He wanted very much to know who she was, to know how it had all happened, her being there, etc. But meantime, like a dunce, as he told himself afterward, he had let her go out of the room, as he meekly answered that there was nothing he specially wanted anything would do —a poached egg, for example ! A poached egg, indeed! And there he was, consumed to know who she was, and if she would ever come in again, and he must not be too eager to find out, for instance from Sister Marie, who was coming in shortly with the supper-tray —for perhaps if ho wanted her to come back she wouldn’t. Girls were sometimes so capricious.

Yet when Sister Marie came to remove the tray, after he had made short work of the poached egg and toast, his impatience and curiosity got the best of him. As quiet little Sister Marie approached the door, he detained her a moment with the remark:

‘ I had another nurse to-day, it seems.’ * This morning?’ inquired Sister Mario. * Sister Scholastica, perhaps. I was off duty.’ ‘ No, I don’t believe it was Sister Scholastica. She may have been here this morning. I mean this afternoon just before you brought ray supper.’ Sister Marie, gentle, timid little soul, sr.ood a moment on the threshold, thinking, ‘ I don’t believe it was a Sister,’ volunteered Charleton, to give her guessing a little help. Sister Marie reflected a moment:

* Oh, Miss Le Blanc, most probably!’ ‘ Miss Le Blanc?’ queried Charleton. ‘ Yes, Miss Le Blanc,’ responded little Sister Marie, simply and directly, as though the statement dispensed

with any-further comment or explanation. Indeed she changed the subject: * Is there anything else you want V " And again Charleton lost his chance to say what he did want very mucha few more details about ‘ Miss Le Blanc ’ than had so far been forthcoming. Well, he reflected that evening, as he thought of her from time to time, she would probably come in the next day— he would : ask one of the Sisters. But she did not appear. Finally, he gave Gus a commission. ■*.- Gus fulfilled it and came back from the kitchenquarters of the convent with the information that Miss Le Blanc was a sister of one of the nuns that she had come up to visit in the North before the war began; and now, like many other people, had decided to stay where she was and not cross the lines till things became quieter. - Charleton waited another day with this information, and finally he gave Gus another commission, the kind Gus doted on. Hadn’t he carried many a note for ‘ Massa Charleton ’ to the ‘ young ladies ’ in the happy, romantic land of Dixie? The burden of the present one w r as to the effect .that its writer did not wish to take any liberty, to presume on kindness too far, but that he was pretty miserable sometimes, laid up as he was, and that the circumstances were particularly hard, as he had never before in his life been in a convent, and sometimes the stillness made him very lonesome, and homesick for his mother and sisters, and not ever having known any nuns he. felt a little shy of conversing with them;' and would it be too much to ask her to step in some time to let him have a little taste of human companionship that it as lather hard for a fellow to be deprived of so long? And he hoped she would not take any offence, and so on, but he was very impatient, and fretful, and he hoped she would forgive him if he was asking too much. , &

. Which he wasn t, it appeared. For that afternoon in came Father Martin accompanied by ‘ Miss Le Blanc,’ the former saying: I have brought you a new medicine. I ■ suspect a little company will help you 'to hurry and net up to chase the Yankees.’ S ■ 1 After a little Father Martin left the two young people together; and from that time on, every day or so till Charleton 4 was able to bo up and hobbling around on a crutch, Angela Le Blanc helped to while away tue hours of his unexpected period of endurance. I hoy discovered that they had some mutual friends in the South, and, young as they both were, other tastes in common made the hours they spent together hours of comfort to the invalid and indeed of great fun to both. One. topic, however, there was on which they were not in harmony, and yet this did not bring about any violent breach between them. With the lightheartedness of youth they touched on it from time to time, but never to the point of violent argument. And this topic was the difference in their religions, , ‘ It’s queer you have never known any Catholics before, Angela said to Charleton one day. * Now I’ve known scores of Presbyterians ’ ’ ‘Really?’ laughed Charleton, as though she had named some extinct animal. * No,’ he continued, * I have never known a single solitary Roman Catholic—and just see what a hotbed of them I’ve jumped into!’ ‘ They don t seem to have done you. any great harm,’ said Angela, ‘ yet I suspect you have dreaded them as you have the bluecoats.’ ‘Oh, more so!’ laughed Charlton. ‘You know I m wild to get a look and fling at the Yankees! Yet I must say the dear little nuns have been good .to me My! I never tasted such broth as Sister Marie brought me for luncheon.’ 5 ‘ Maybe they’re fattening you up the way ogres used to do bad little boys * ° , - ‘ I wonder,’ Charleton speculated, as he watched the pretty curves of her lips and the bright dancing light in her merry sweet eyes. & ‘ Meantime, you had better not be too recklessly anxious to see the Yankees,’ she answered ‘for I heard in town to-day that a small part of Buell’s men are making a light skirmish through this county, sniffing

up Bragg’s tracks. And I suspect you are scarcely able to rout a stalwart bluecoat if be should suddenly make his appearance. We should have to look to Daddy Green for defence.’ . Daddy Green, the old gardener, was practically the only other man about the place just ) then. ' O glory!’ moaned Charleton. 'I wish I were out of thisthe very idea of not being able to fight!’ ‘I must say you’re polite/ said Angela. ‘I think if you had any chivalry you would not be so eager to get away. You would stay here and defend us poor, unprotected women.’ As she spoke, a queer little note of truth in her humorous protest against his eagerness to be gone, Charleton regarded her a -moment with a tell-tale something in his eyes which had begun to gleam there several times during the last few weeks of the enforced invalidism she had helped to lighten. _ But Charleton Duval had set out for battle against Union soldiers—not to lay siege to the more beguiling citadel of a dear girl’s heart. Months of ha ref fighting probably lay before him, as soon as he was strong enough. the prospect flashed before his mental vision as his eyes lingered on Angela. It would not be fair to try to pledge her a devotion already plighted to the cause whose colors he wore. Service to that cause first, and then «

From day to day he was beginning to be almost strong enough to resume that service. He was at last able to throw aside his crutch, and then his stick, and now finally all he had to do was to get a little stronger and more supple and he might set forth. He remained in the open air as much as possible; and among the pleasantest and, he declared, most improving occasions of these hours out-of-doors were those when Angela and he walked or read together on one of the rustic seats in the quiet, old-fashioned convent garden. One afternoon as ho waited for Angela to come and keep such an agreeable engagement, he was startled to see her suddenly come toward him with evident anxiety in her eves. . You must do exactly as I tell you/ she said rapidly and peremptorily, ' Take off your coat. Put on Daddy Green s lying there; -take that spade, and appear to be very much engrossed in loosening the soil around those rose-bushes!’

With the obedience due to a superior officer Charleton obeyed, and as ho cast aside his own coat, Angola took it up and folded it very small, saying: ‘ Don’t be alarmed. 11l see it gets a good pressing before you have to wear it again. With that she fairly crammed it under a rose-bush whose thick twigs hugged the ground. And then she left him, seeing, as she hurried to the house, what ho did not see as he bent over the gardener’s task-—a group of several bluecoats riding swiftly up the valley toward, the convent—the men she had descried from her upper window before she descended to enforce Charleton’s strategic-change of costume.

Straight up to the convent came the men. Meantime Angela had arrived in the corridor just inside the broad high steps leading up to the parlor door, which was open. Old Gus, who had begun to make himself useful about the place during his master’s invalidism, was busy cleaning off those steps as the Union men suddenly made their appearance, terrifying the darky so that he was too scared to run or cry out. He stood there transfixed—an ebony statue of fear.

One of the men addressed him : ‘ What’s this%placo, Uncle Ned?’

‘ It’s a nunnery, Massa. Jes’ little nuns, that ain’t got no particular politics, sah ! Yuh ain’t goin’ to sheer ’em to death, is yuh?’

The leader’s eyes swept around the little farm. ‘ Guess no graycoats are lurking around any such quiet place as this,’ said he. ‘We must be on the wrong scent!’

Just then his eyes rested on the figure of Charleton down in the garden—Charleton now so slender, and now so obediently bent on his task at the roots of the rose-bush, that when the Union man asked Gus; Who’s that down there?’ Gus thought he was answering truthfully when he said that the bent back in

Daddy Green’s old working jacket was Daddy Green’s back.

That’s jes’ the old gyardener. He’s the onliest man about this nunnery.’ The i bitterness of his remark was lost upon the company, so bent upon its own business as scarcely to notice the self-effacing quality of Gus’ statement: made from his particular point of view that did not consider himself and his master as belonging to the convent family. Meanwhile one of the Union men, recruited from the neighborhood, said:

‘ Yes, that’s just old Daddy Green he’s not worth our trouble; come, let’s go on into town. I told you tin’s was a convent, and that there was nothing to be scared up in the way of a Johnny Beb here!’ And. with that the company took its departure. Meantime, Angela in the corridor had listened breathlessly to the conversation between Gus and the enemy. Almost exhausted from her tense excitement over the performance, she dragged herself again up to the window of her room, which swept the country like the little pilot-room of a boat. She saw the Union men riding off, and there at her window she stood till the last one of them disappeared through the trees on the way to town. As for Gus, when lie finished his task—which was soon, for he was. on the last step when the late interview with the enemy took place—-with the fondness of men for discussing important matters with one of their own sex, he had strayed down to tell Daddy Green the news:

‘ Lawsie, Massa Charleton, what’s yuh doin’ in dat rig ? Lawsie! ef I didn’t tell de bluecoats yuh was do gyardener!’

What’s that?’ asked Charleton, in amazement. Y r as, sah ! A paheel of Yanks come up while I was a-cleanin’ the steps and I tole ’em yuh was the gyarclener!—Laws mercy! Daddy Green’ll be considerable flattered to have yuh took for him.’ ‘ Have they gone?’ Charleton was asking eagerly. ‘ Yas, sah! They’s gone! And we’se safe this time! But, law, Massa Charleton, wish yo’ leg ’d hurry itse’f and git well, so’s we kin jine the rog’lar army. I’se git-tin’ kinder scairt here wif’ nothin’ but dose hvah women-folks !’

Charleton laughed as he began to get out of Daddy Green’s dusty coat, saying : Well, the}? - managed to save our lives somehow! Isn’t it queer, Gus, that two good Presbyterians like you and me should be taken care of so well by Catholics V

‘lt she is!’ said Gus, adding: ‘ What’d yo’ pa and ma say ef doy knowed?’ - What, indeed, thought Charleton, as he had asked of himself several times ere this. -What, moreover, would they think, if they knew some other things that had been transpiring in his own mind these days, as the gentle Sisters came and went, ministering to him ? And also Father Martin, who had been so kind and considerate, so far from any suspicion of ‘ proselytizing,’ till he himself had flung the gauntlet of argument at the old priest, who then had turned in and given him as good as he sent! Till now some of his ideas, long wavering from Presbyterian principles, had begun to take shape that would indeed surprise his father and mother even as they did him, though they, at the same time, became very convincing these altering ideas• very convincing and very comforting! Nor had the beauty and truth of Catholic Faith failed to make an appeal to him through another influence. This ‘ influence ’ was now coming down the gardenpath, her cheeks flushed, apparently with joy as well as excitement, her eyes dancing ! And as he saw her, and. recognised how happy his escape from the enemy had made her, Charleton knew then he would not have courage to leave her withoutwithout telling her something very pleasant. As they met, he drew her down beside him on the little bench beneath a very umbrageous tree, so umbrageous indeed that old Gus, who had strayed up the walk, but was curious to know what his young master was up to, couldn’t see that Charleton retained the hand of the gentle lady whose strategy had saved

his though for that Gus always took credit himself as he recounted how he had told'-the Union men ‘ it was the gyardener.’ Nor could Gus hear that young master as, there under the shade of the great tree, he reminded the girl "who sat with him of the gallant custom of an earlier;,day when,- if a hero slaved the life of a lady fair, he was rewarded in most generous wise. And now since here was a reverse case, a heroine had saved the life of a poor helpless knight—didn’t it seem but right, said Charleton very persuasively, that the heroine —should * Should pay the penalty?’ supplied Angela, as two pairs of very happy eyes looked into each other. * Exactly!’ laughed the rescued, as in the rescuer’s eyes he read her willingness to <*. pay the penalty of heroism — Bensiffer’s l<Magazine .